Impactful Live-Tweeting Strategies We Saw From the First Round of the Democratic Debates

June
27
2019
by
Tina Nazerian

Photo Credit: SnapStream

The race for the 2020 presidential election is well underway. Ten candidates took the stage in Miami on Wednesday night for the first round of the Democratic debates. While the candidates wrangled their thoughts and policy positions, news outlets were hard at work capturing every interesting comment and meme-able reaction. Here are some impactful live-tweeting strategies the SnapStream team saw some of our media customers use Wednesday night.

Let One Reporter Take Over Your Twitter Account

BuzzFeed News streamlined its live-tweeting of the first round of Democratic Debates by letting reporter Ryan Brooks, who covers the Democrats, take over its Twitter account. Brooks quickly delivered some great content to the 1.3 million Twitter accounts that follow BuzzFeed News.

When Beto O’Rourke started speaking Spanish to answer his first question, many people noticed Cory Booker’s reaction. The Daily Show instantly grabbed the perfect image of the moment, added a hilarious caption, and put it on Twitter. The post has been liked more than 60,000 times, and retweeted more than 11,000 times.

Politico also tweeted about O’Rourke speaking Spanish for part of his first response. But rather than focusing on Booker’s reaction, the organization took a different approach. It tweeted out a video clip of the moment, and added quotes from two of its staff members above the video. Politico’s Twitter followers not only got to immediately watch the scene on their devices, but they also got to read two very different takes on it. The video has gotten over 35,000 views.

Thoughts on Beto O'Rourke answering his first question tonight partly in Spanish: